How the world reported on the Queen’s death

Political leaders and media outlets around the world have been paying tribute to Queen Elizabeth II, who died yesterday at the age of 96.

After reigning for 70 years, Her Majesty died peacefully on Thursday afternoon at Balmoral, her Scottish estate, where she had spent much of the summer.

Newspapers and broadcasters in the UK have been providing blanket coverage of the story, but it is also being followed across the world, not least because of the Queen’s extensive travels during her remarkable reign.

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UK’s ‘biggest strength’

“Queen Elizabeth II rarely had a misstep,” said the Toronto-based Globe and Mail newspaper, recalling that “she would tell Canadians she was happy to be ‘coming home’”. It added that “her endurance has been her greatest gift to Canadians and her passing a great sadness, but hopefully for many Canadians, it will not be the end of the story about Canada and the Crown”.

Her long reign “straddled two centuries of seismic social, political and technological upheaval”, said The East African, as “the last vestiges of Britain’s vast empire crumbled”, “Brexit shook the foundations of her kingdom, and her family endured a series of scandals”. But “throughout, she remained consistently popular”, it said.

The UK “has lost its biggest strength – the glue that for so long has bound together the union – just as it is trying to define its place in the world for the decades ahead”, said The Sydney Morning Herald. The Australian paper noted that “in many parts of the Commonwealth, demands are mounting for a re-evaluation of Britain’s colonial past, for apology and atonement”.

The New Zealand Herald said that the island nation will now “move into a state of national mourning”. It noted that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had discovered the Queen had died when she was “woken by a police officer shining a torch into her room at 4.50am”.

An ‘unemotional sovereign’

In France, Le Monde said that the Queen was “revered by the British public” and “the unemotional sovereign who left a lasting imprint on the monarchy”. Le Parisien described the Queen as the “cement, the reassuring figure who embodied the unity of the kingdom”.

German broadcaster DW said that the Queen was “particularly partial to Germany and visited it more often than almost any other country”. It said that the monarch was “marvelled at, criticised, occasionally mocked, but always respected”.

According to The Irish Times, the monarch’s death is an “earthquake” for Northern Ireland’s unionists, a century on from the formation of the province.

“To lose her just as a humiliating centenary year is limping to its end, with the last UK prime minister ostentatiously disregarding them, and Irish nationalists and republicans getting more confident by the day, is just a disaster.”

‘But never Israel’

“Britain prepares for a new era after the Queen’s death,” said The New York Times, recalling that she was “unshakably committed to the rituals of her role amid epic social and economic change and family scandal”.

The New York Post talked about her relations with the US, noting that she “ultimately rubbed shoulders with 13 US presidents, starting with Herbert Hoover”.

In Israel, the Jerusalem Post pointed out that during her 70 years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth “travelled widely and visited many countries” including Jordan, Egypt and others in the Middle East and North Africa – “but never Israel”.

“Her majesty and the Kingdom are a fabric of Iraq’s history,” said Iraqi News, adding that Iraq has a “long and complicated history with the United Kingdom”.

The state-owned Russian news agency Tass recalled that when the Queen met with the first person in space, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, in 1961, she was “easy-mannered and informal during the meeting and did not stick to the strict protocol.

“When Gagarin ate a piece of lemon out of his cup of tea in breach of the protocol, the Queen supported him by following the suit,” it said.